Pancake wrote:I do a bit of GIS consulting work on the side. ArcGIS isn't particularly multithreaded so i7-7700k is fine or even an i5 or i3. Basically, you want fastest single-thread performance. SSDs good. I run with dual 480GB SSDs - one for general PC stuff and one dedicated for GIS data and working room. In my little corner of the world I've got about 250GB raw data and about 150GB analyses so for my next upgrade I'd be getting 1TB GIS dedicated SSD. But it depends on your requirements. Graphics card fine. Mostly I'm doing 2D stuff so just about anything would suffice. My GTX 970 was only bought for Grand Theft Auto V but I haven't even played that for close to a year... Memory is fine although I only really push my 32GB when running my own GIS software which can do ludicrously large dissolves, intersects etc which ArcGIS can only dream about...
What you really want to spend money on is awesome screen real estate. I've got dual Dell Ultrasharp 3011's which is pretty sweet but if I were investing in a new build I'd go 4K 40" or thereabouts or even two 'cause they're so damn cheap these days. For GIS visualisation nothing beats masses of glorious pixels. Beautiful, sweet luscious pixels. All you can eat.
Seems the i7-7700K has the highest stock clocks (4.2GHz) and boost (4.5GHz), so I'll stick with that. I've got 674GB of GIS files in storage, but most is probably old and I'm not doing any consulting right now. I'd be much more inclined to go for the +$300 cost of a 1TB SDD if I had anything lined up to use this as another income source right away, but will keep this in mind for later. What kind of consulting do you do and with which programs if you don't mind me asking? Am really torn on the monitors because I'm used to 2560x1600 even on laptops, but I can't really justify increasing the build cost quite as much as a 32"+ Ultrasharp. What would you get if you were limiting yourself to one right now? Could add a second one later. And I'm guessing a curved screen would be a bad call? Maybe the
non-curved U2718Q at 3140x2160 for $740?
cheesyking wrote:I don't remember exactly how the OEM licensing changed with 10 but retail is supposed to be a better deal these days.
Changed it to the retail version, the major difference seems to be transfer rights to another PC with a different motherboard... which I would've irked me a few years down the line. Thanks, friend.
ludi wrote:I'm using that exact case and just
completed an HTPC build. I'm questioning the mini-ITX decision for your build, though. Unless you plan to never, ever see an optical disc or add archival hard disks (and how likely is that in GIS work?), I would suggest something in the micro-ATX range instead, with at least one 5.25" device bay and a couple removable hard drive trays.
I have an external optical drive laying around here somewhere which hasn't been used in years, but from looking at other completed builds there's room for a 3.5" behind the motherboard, a 3.5" in front of the PSU, two 2.5" drives behind the motherboard backplate, and another 2.5" (maybe 3.5"?) next to the heatsink. With the m.2 drive, that's enough room for six storage drives and the motherboard has a sixth SATA connector if I need to lay a loose one in there... or if it's a 2.5" it might also fit below the 3.5" behind the motherboard. Fair point with how cramped that'd be, but I don't anticipate that many drives anyway. Nice pictures, looks great.
wingless wrote:Save on the CPU and motherboard and get a Ryzen 7 1700 for $299 and with an AM4 ITX motherboard. You'll get twice the core and threads for less. This isn't a gaming build so Ryzen will perform well for you and add that extra layer of multi-threaded future-proofing.
Pancake said I'd want more single-threaded performance (which confirmed my prior understanding), but I was sorely tempted by Ryzen. Haven't built an AMD system since the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ days.
Chrispy_ wrote:Just avoid high-DPI screens like the plague, I can't speak for all GIS packages, but none of the GIS software I've seen is particularly modern and it does not deal with DPI-scaling well. Get a display that's in the 80-110dpi range otherwise you're setting yourself up for disappointment, most likely. That means 24" 1080p, 32" 1440p, or if you're mad-crazy a 40-50" 4K television that will essentially act as a borderless 2x2 eyefinity display.
Yeah, I've run into this too. Based on that and wanting to keep costs down for now, I'm thinking the
U2717D at 2560x1440 (109dpi) for $570 which, with the only other change being a retail version of Windows, would put me at $2181.53 + s/h.
